


Ride

by PetrichorPerfume



Category: Supernatural
Genre: And a Horse - Freeform, Bike Rides, Bus, Cars, Cas has strange ideas, Castiel on a Bus, Dean Teaches Cas to Drive, Dean Teaches Castiel to Ride a Bike, Dean tries to teach Cas how to be human, Fluff, Flying, Guilty Dean, Horseback Riding, M/M, Pre-Relationship, Spoiler: he fails, Stupid time-traveling angels, Wings, learning to walk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-17
Updated: 2014-06-16
Packaged: 2018-02-05 00:09:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 2,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1798372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PetrichorPerfume/pseuds/PetrichorPerfume
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean teaches Castiel how to be human. He starts with small things like bagels and busses and ends up with a tour of the universe. Somewhere deep inside he thinks that makes him a pretty bad teacher, but right now he can't bring himself to care.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. You Have to Walk Before you can Ride

Dean sometimes wondered how Castiel had learned how to walk. He’d seemed to have mastered the art by the time they’d met, but as far as Dean knew angels in their true forms didn’t have legs. 

“Hey, Cas, how did you learn how to walk?” Dean is teaching him how to eat a bagel when he pops the question. 

Castiel tries folding the bagel, and Dean gently corrects his form. “Just like everyone else does,” Castiel replies, as he finally grasps the concept of the bagel. 

“Which was...” Dean prompts, because he’s pretty sure Castiel has the wrong idea of how people learn to walk. 

“Many hundreds of years ago, my favorite sister took me to Earth. We both found vessels easily, back in those days, as there were many more believers and even more people willing to accept us into their bodies in exchange for a cure for or immunity to the plague. When I got up the first time, I fell down. I found it unpleasant and made sure it did not happen again.”

“Wow, Cas,” Dean says, because once again, Castiel has gravely miscalculated a vital aspect of humanity. 

“Is that not how you learned to walk, Dean?”

Dean debates whether or not to tell him the truth. “No, Cas, I’m pretty sure that’s how everyone learns to walk.”


	2. Horses

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Castiel learns how to ride a horse.

They try horses first, because Dean doesn’t want Castiel within fifty feet of the driver’s side of a car. He’d had to learn for a hunt a few years back, and he figured that it was one of those things that once you learned, you never forgot. 

It’s a nightmare and a half to put the saddles on the horses, because the little beasts keep puffing out their chests and holding their breath and Cas can’t understand how they can be so manipulative. 

It’s a little easier once they’re both on the damn things, even though Cas has had a couple of false starts and had nearly fallen off just trying to climb up. Dean is in an English saddle because he prefers it, but he’s started Cas off with a Western one because he’s heard it’s easier when you’re first learning. 

“This is fairly easy, Dean. I fail to see what else there is to learn,” Castiel comments, because the horses are walking at a pace so slow it might as well be a crawl. 

“Hold on to the reins, clench your legs, and tap your feet against the horse’s sides like this,” he says, and demonstrates on his own horse. The horse takes off into a trot, and Dean rides it around the clearing a few times before riding over to Cas and pulling back the reins until the horse is walking again. “Did you see how I went up and down in the saddle? You’re going to want to do that.”

“Dean, I don’t want to hurt the animal. That would be inhumane.” 

“It’s just a light tap, Cas. It doesn’t hurt the horse. That’s why we’re not wearing spurs.” 

Castiel seems satisfied with Dean’s answer, so he taps the horse once with his feet. 

The horse doesn’t respond right away, and Dean curses himself for picking out the dumbest horse in the stable, but before he can tell Cas to try again, the angel takes it upon himself to tap the horse three times fast. 

The horse takes off, cantering at full speed, and Cas screams and nearly falls off, but manages not to. Dean spurs his own horse into action, galloping towards Cas and the other horse within seconds. He pulls the reins from Cas and manages to stop both horses in less than fifteen seconds. 

“No more horses,” Dean says, and Cas seems to agree.


	3. Car Ride

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Castiel learns how to drive a car.

It’s a couple of weeks before Dean even considers letting Cas near a car. 

They pick up a rental for the day, because Dean doesn’t want Cas anywhere near his Baby, and Dean spends an hour lecturing Cas on where to place his hands and how to break and how to use the steering wheel. 

Cas is blank throughout the whole thing, so after a while Dean gives up and lets him take the wheel, figuring, “What’s the worst that can happen?” 

“Where do you want the vehicle to go?” Castiel asks as he slides into the driver’s seat. His hands are folded neatly in his lap, and his feet are nowhere near the pedals. 

“Once you put your foot on the gas and your hands on the wheel, you should try taking her to the other end of the parking lot.” 

Cas doesn’t bother to move his hands or feet, doesn’t even bother to respond, and the next thing Dean knows he’s sitting on the ground with Cas standing beside him, and the car is on the other end of the lot. Dean gives up on driving lessons after that.


	4. The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Castiel rides a bus for the first time.

Dean teaches Cas how to ride the bus next, because even though he’d explained that people like them just didn’t ride busses, Cas had been having none of that. 

When Dean and Cas get on the bus, Cas insists on feeding the little coin acceptor. He doesn’t seem to quite grasp the concept of quarters, though, so they spend five minutes in the front of the bus looking stupid while Cas hunts through his pockets for the appropriate currency. 

Dean nearly has a heart-attack when he catches sight of a strange-looking, colorful quarter with a hologram on the front. He stops Cas just as the angel is about to drop it into the coin slot, and sure enough it says 2065 on the front. “Give that to me,” he says irritably, because he has enough problems without having to deal with stupid time-traveling angels. He makes a mental note to destroy it later. 

By the time they’ve paid for their ride, the bus driver is glaring at them with enough force to bend metal. The only other passenger on the bus doesn’t seem terribly bothered, but Dean chalks that up to the fact that she looks as if she’s pushing 105. 

Cas tries three seats, and finding them not to his liking, settles on standing. 

“You have to hold on to something if you’re gonna stand around the whole time,” Dean tells him, but Cas looks horrified at the idea. 

“Dean, you have no idea what kind of bacteria and viruses exist in this vehicle.” 

“Dude, you can’t get sick. What’s the big deal?”

“I try not to come into contact with potentially harmful lifeforms so that I don’t accidently infect you or your brother, Dean.”

“Fine,” Dean grumbles, because it’s actually a pretty nice sentiment. “Hold on to me, then.” 

They get off at the next stop because Cas is horrible at riding buses. Cas seems to sense that something is wrong, so when they get off, he asks, “Did I perform poorly? ‘Being human’ is incredibly difficult.”

“Riding a bus isn’t a test, Cas. It’s something that sort of just happens. It’s okay, though. You’re still learning.” 

“If you say so, Dean.”


	5. Bike Ride

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Castiel learns how to ride a bike.

“Don’t let go, Dean,” Castiel begs for what must be the fiftieth time that day.

 

“I won’t,” Dean promises, a little out of breath from running alongside the Cas and his brand new mountain bike for the past two hours.

 

Castiel wants to say something, to once again remind Dean of the pointlessness of this exercise, but then he’s falling, tilting dangerously to one side, so he pulls his handlebars to compensate and by the time he’s righted himself he’s breathing too fast to say anything.

 

“Don’t let go,” Castiel says again, a little less like a request and a little more like an order this time when he feels the warm heat of Dean’s hand retreat just a little.

 

Dean doesn’t answer this time, though, and for one terrifying moment after Dean lets go he thinks he’s going to fall for real this time, but then his wings flare into being behind him and shoot out to help stabilize him, and then he’s riding, _really_ riding, hands and feet and wings and body moving in perfect harmony.

 

He hears Dean cheering behind him, so he turns the bike around and playfully slaps Dean with a wing for letting go when he’d _told_ him not to. He must have underestimated his strength, though, because Dean falls over in a heap of limbs. He’s laughing, so he must be all right, but Castiel dismounts anyway to help him to his feet.

 

“I told you not to let go,” he mummers, pulling Dean close.

 

“You did?” Dean asks, feigning confusion. “I must not have heard you over the sound of how awesome of a teacher I am.”

 

Castiel laughs. “Next time, I’m teaching you how to fly.” 


	6. Fly

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean flies with Castiel.

Flying with Cas is a lot different than flying in a plane, Dean thinks. It’s a lot nicer, for one, and Dean feels completely safe wrapped in the angel’s arms. 

He can see the whole world from here, something he knows should absolutely not be possible. Everything below him looks like far-away points of light, but he finds that if he focuses, he can see cities and streets and tiny little toy people. It’s too much to take in, but at the same time he never, ever wants to leave, never wants to descend, never wants to go back to Earth to live his tiny, limited little existence again. 

He wants to ask Cas why he ever comes down, why he even bothers spending time on Earth doing menial things like eating breakfast and pretending to be human when he can be up here, looking down at the masterpiece that is planet Earth. 

He must have said something aloud, because Cas is answering him with such earnestness that it makes Dean’s heart clench. “For you, Dean.” 

He doesn’t know what to do with that, doesn’t know how to interpret the fact that Cas would grace him with more than a few moments of his time once in a lifetime, that the angel would let him push him into humanity when he was clearly destined for greater things than bagels and bike rides and being awkward on buses. 

“I’m sorry, Cas,” he says, almost wishing that Cas would let him go, let him fall, for what he’d done to the angel. 

“There is nothing to apologize for,” Cas says, and takes them higher. 

Dean can’t breathe when he sees what unfolds before him, but it doesn’t feel like he needs to anymore, which is a good thing because there probably isn’t any oxygen where they are now anyway. 

He can see everything from here. Everything. He can see the other planets in the solar system, he can see the sun, he can see the moons orbiting Earth and most of the other planets, and he can see billions and billions of stars beyond that. He knows that it’s not possible, knows that the scale is all wrong, but right now he can’t bring himself to question it. 

“Do you want me to show you the rest, Dean?” Cas asks, and Dean draws in a surprised breath – another thing that shouldn’t be possible, up here – and hesitates. 

“There’s more?” He asks. 

Cas laughs, and it’s a beautiful sound that seems to belong up here. “What you’re seeing now is only one small galaxy in one tiny section of the universe. There is so, so, so much more.” 

Dean’s scared, but he nods anyway because he doesn’t think he’s capable of saying no. 

Cas takes them higher, and this time, Dean is sure that this is everything. There must be at least a hundred thousand galaxies below them and above them and all around them. “This is it, right?”

“This is one tiny corner,” Cas corrects.

“You’ve seen it all, haven’t you?” Dean asks.

“Yes, Dean. Would you like to see it?”

“How much else is out there?”

“There’s a whole universe out there.”

Dean’s never thought is terms of universes before, but he supposes it’s never too late to start. There’s a whole universe out there, waiting to be seen, but still, he hesitates. 

“I can have you back in time for dinner,” Cas offers, and Dean has heard that line before, on cheap motel TV screens with bad sci-fi, and he’s never seen it work out, not even once, but somehow he trusts that Cas will keep his word. 

“Let’s do it.”


End file.
